The swifts arrived late this afternoon.
There were only six or seven of them, but they were here, wheeling and calling in the cloudy sky.
I don’t mind telling you that I was very relieved indeed, how terrible to have a summer without their glorious cries. I spent so long staring longingly at the empty sky on our walk this morning that I kept banging my toes on rocks and tripping over tussocks of grass.
They are here. The world is not ending. Global destruction has not commenced after all, and everything is all right.
They are terribly late. This does not accord with global warming, in fact actually it seems that the weather is rather colder than usual, which would account for the insect populations not getting going yet.
I expect if I look on the BBC or some other august purveyor of news I will find a reason why everywhere being colder than usual is incontrovertible evidence of global warming. That is usually the case.
In the meantime I don’t care. Disaster is averted in Windermere and although I ought to mind about the rest of the world, I don’t really.
It is colder than usual, but it has actually been a jolly good drying day. I have washed our dressing gowns, which is always a lengthy process, because they weigh about two kilos each and take forever to dry, even with today’s brisk breeze and occasional bursts of sunshine.
They needed washing because we have a new poopy, and she has not been very cautious and observant when people are holding cups of coffee.
Apart from that she is getting along very nicely. She and Roger Poopy have become utterly inseparable, rolling around together like, well, like a nest of poopies. Roger Poopy’s father is too old and creaky to join in, but is clearly happy to spectate, from a civilised distance.
He is not going to last much longer. His back legs slid out from under him on the walk this morning. It is the first time that has happened, and it is not a good sign.
I was supposed to be writing a story when I got back, because in a burst of supreme overconfidence I have bet one of the other students on our course that I will get published before she does. This is unlikely at the moment, since I haven’t actually written anything much, and so I thought I would get on with it this morning.
I made a pot of tea and some cheese sandwiches and sat down in front of the computer, but after about five hundred words I remembered that I had not finished our tax returns.
Obviously this was urgent and important, and so I unearthed the calculator and started doing sums.
I do not know which is the harder, writing a bestseller or coming up with some creative end-of-year accounting, and to be honest much the same talents need to be applied. I scratched my head and groaned and tried to remember why we had done so many utterly inexplicable peculiar financial things. It is terribly hard. Looking back through our bank statements is a weary record of financial incontinence, money just seems to leak out messily at all of the worst moments, not that there is ever a good moment.
There were so many extravagances of which I had no recollection whatsoever. I have bought a multimeter and some drill brushes, a fuel additive tank and some wiring connectors, what a thrilling year I have had.
I sighed and poured more tea and yawned until the general fuss around my feet became too much to ignore, so we went off to the Library Gardens to throw sticks and bark.
Mark came home then, and I realised that the washing was still on the line, the breakfast pots still drying on the draining board, and the sausages still in the packet in the fridge.
Mark said that it did not matter and suggested that we had some gin.
So we did.
